


I Don't Blame You For Being You, But You Can't Blame Me For Hating It

by btBatt



Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is...
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Little Less Sixteen Candles (Music Video), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3548456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/btBatt/pseuds/btBatt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>16 candles au prompt from allosaurusmaximusres and oh_ms_omegalomaniac.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trick_ta_life](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trick_ta_life/gifts), [oh_ms_omegalomaniac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_ms_omegalomaniac/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Strange Medicine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/307075) by [megyal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal). 



Chicago isn’t the safest place to be right now. Nowhere’s exactly _safe_ , but the northern cities are definitely the least safe. Seattle, New York, Chicago, anywhere with minimal sunshine and optimal population is fair game to the vampires. So, maybe Chicago isn’t the safest place for them to be right now, but hell if they don’t know how to look out for themselves. Because they do.

Because Pete is a fucking vampire himself, okay, and “fighting fire with fire” has never had such poetic roots before. And even if Andy is human (and sometimes, Patrick just isn’t quite sure), he’s made an art of being the purest, strongest human he can be, even before the vampires took over. Maybe this isn’t the form he was expecting the apocalypse to take, but he was ready for it anyway. Joe’s not a bad fighter himself, not by a long shot. And he’s got talents. Patrick tells him that a lot as they sit at the dining room table that they never use for food, when he’s looking at the craftsmanship of the new weapons, or the repairs he manages on the old ones. They’re sleek and safe and functional. In short, Joe’s weapons are the reason they’re all still alive. Whenever Patrick tries to bring it up—and he does try because Joe’s never gotten the credit he deserves—Joe just shrugs it off and hands the credit off to Google and WikiHow. It’s very frustrating. Though, to be fair, Pete tells the same things to Patrick in their quieter moments, when Pete can hear everyone’s heartbeats, when his head screams. Pete doesn’t stick his nose in the crook of Patrick’s neck much anymore because that’s just asking for trouble, but they sit close. Pete’s still tactile when he’s sated and fed and not about to crawl his way out of his skin. He sits pressed against Patrick’s side or lies with his head in Patrick’s lap and whispers about Patrick saving him, bringing him back to himself, even if his body is still fucked and undead. Patrick laughs softly because it calms Pete, and he really does attribute it to Google, and the money he spent on the ingredients that go into the shakes, and he credits Pete himself because this version of the shake works, but Patrick thinks the person still has to fight and want to be human. And Pete’s been fighting his own brain for the better part of his adult life; this is just something new to fight against. Pete is good, in ways and quantities that he’ll never understand, but Patrick doesn’t let him attribute his self control and human soul to anything Patrick throws together in a blender, Christ.

If they haven’t managed to make the greater Chicago area safe yet, well. They’re working on it. Slowly and not too surely. Their neighborhood is one of the safer ones in the city, scarcely populated and left alone by vampires mostly. They do still go on nightly patrols around the rest of the city. There haven’t been any actual missions lately, any new hives to exterminate or many ferals to euthanize. It’s been quiet and the main gangs seem to have settled for the moment, the lines drawn in the sand laying out their respective territories. It’s been smooth sailing, and they’re almost getting comfortable in it. It almost feels more like living than surviving. Joe’s stopped having so many nightmares. Andy still trains pretty frequently, but he would be doing that regardless. Pete’s even writing again. Patrick looks up some days and his eyes catch the glint coming off a weapon, or Pete’s fangs show when he grins, and he thinks _oh, right, hunters._

Patrick’s always had problems telling the difference between “the calm before the storm” and “the dust settling” kinds of quiet. They still run into the odd vampire, too hungry to do a clean job or remember when to stop, but nothing serious. All-in-all, Patrick feels more like he’s part of a neighborhood watch than a vampire hunting division these days. The Dandies are much too concise and methodical for such slip-ups and, while there’s by no means a truce between them, it seems as though neither group is willing or so incensed to strike the first attack at the moment.

In short, Patrick is kind of an idiot for being surprised when a couple dozen Dandies turn up in a disorienting mass of breezing bodies. 

In his defense, they’re not even in Dandy territory, what the fuck.

They’re stopped on the outskirts of downtown—definitely not a safe place to be, even if it isn’t Dandy territory—and a couple of humans are smoking up in the back alley of whatever club they’re at. There aren’t any vampires around, but they stop anyway to keep a watchful eye on them. Andy and Pete are close to the mouth of the alley, guarding, and Patrick and Joe are in the van, half a block away and making sure no one sneaks up on the others. Pete turns around long enough to flash a grin and roll his eyes at Patrick (he forgets that Patrick doesn’t have vampire eyesight and can’t actually _see_ him rolling his eyes, but his whole head kind of rolls too, so Patrick knows), before turning back to the alley. Patrick agrees: people are fucking stupid.

“Hey,” Joe says, bracing his hands on the dashboard and leaning forward. He squints and is quiet for a few seconds. “Hey, is…check out the roof. Do you see—shit.” Joe leans back with wide eyes as Patrick peers at the roofs around Pete and Andy, trying to spot something. “Patrick, headlights.”

Patrick still can’t see anything, but he’s already moving to flicker the headlights when the driver’s side door is ripped open and tossed to the side. The metal makes a horrible screeching-groaning noise and Patrick yells. It’s all loud enough that Pete and Andy are looking back at the van by the time vampires—Dandies, if the clothes are any indication—start jumping off the roof the the building adjacent to the club, and then Patrick can’t focus on much of anything anymore. He reaches for his weapon instinctively—one of Joe’s modified guns—and Joe grabs his arm as a vampire grabs Patrick by the collar of his shirt and tries to drag him out of the van. Patrick yells again as Joe shoots the vampire in the arm.

“Thanks,” Patrick gasps as Joe releases him. Patrick grabs his gun and they both tumble onto the street, weapons raised, running to get closer to the fight. Their weapons are okay for long range stuff, pretty accurate, and while Patrick’s eyes are worse than Joe’s and they both own corrective eyewear, they’re pretty good shots. It’s easy enough to fire at a slow-moving vampire that hasn’t noticed them yet, but vampires move way too fast for either of them, and it’s best to get between Pete and his adversaries before taking shots.

Joe jumps straight into the fray, weapon raised and teeth gritted. Patrick raises his gun as a couple of vampires are pushed out to the edge of the skirmish. He fires once and nails one of them in the shoulder. Not a bad shot, but not a kill either. The vampire goes down and Patrick shifts his aim to the second as its gaze finds him. He pulls the trigger just as someone grabs him from behind. He’s jarred, and the shot goes haywire, causing someone to scream, and not the vampire he was aiming for. Patrick has half a second to panic about who he just shot—that scream could’ve been anyone—before he’s being dragged backwards and thinks, _oh shit, right, vampire_. He throws an elbow back into the vampire’s gut, not enough to hurt it, by any means (Patrick isn’t that diluted), but just enough to give his right arm some slack. He swings his arm down and pulls the trigger, relishing for a second in the wounded cry the Dandy gives before another wretches the weapon from his grasp. Patrick aims a kick at the vampire’s stomach, thinking hysterically about how he needs to start looking behind him, oh my God, he really has gotten lazy and careless in his fucking security, but then the vampire’s hand is around his throat, fingernails like knives digging in to some pretty important arteries. It swings him around and Patrick’s shoulder blades connect with brick wall of the club a moment before his skull does.

Patrick opens his mouth to scream for help and the heel of the vampire’s hand presses hard over the front of his throat and nothing more than a wheeze comes out. It reaches up with its other hand and shreds through Patrick’s leather jacket and t-shirt in a fluid motion. The material pulls against Patrick’s back, strains before the seams pop and the fabric peels away from his shoulder, but the vampire holds him in place by the throat. Patrick’s brain, which is starting to really suffer for the lack of oxygen, catches up with the situation and he kicks out in desperation. He manages to get his knee lodged up into the vampire’s groin, making it hiss and, unfortunately, tighten its hold instead of loosen it. Its fingernails puncture the side of his neck and Patrick closes his eyes against the panic that’s setting in.

There’s a moment—half a moment—where his neck stings and the vampire doesn’t move. Patrick can hear the battle mere years away. He thinks he catches a glimpse of Andy’s bright hair as he whirls through the crowd…but then the moment ends, and the world speeds back up as the vampire removes his hand from Patrick’s throat, dislodges his fingernails from Patrick’s flesh. Everything sharpens a little bit, even though he’s pretty sure he’s in the midst of passing out from the lack of oxygen. He knows he’s started dragging in ragged breaths, knows he needs to call Pete, knows he needs help here, but his body won’t respond to his will. And then the vampires mouth is over the wounds, and instead of just sucking his blood, it bites him anyway. Patrick’s eyes squeeze shut and he sobs through his fucked up gasping.

The world starts to blur faster and he’s going down hard, he knows. His last coherent thought is that he really is horrible at judging the meaning behind the quiet because the dust is obviously not settling. Unless it just happens to settle over his grave.


	2. Found Another Victim but No One's Gonna Find

This isn’t a fight they’re going to win, Pete knows. They were taken by surprise, even Patrick and Joe, acting as lookouts, and they are incredibly outnumbered. There are twenty-six Dandies all around them and the scene has dissolved into utter chaos. Pete’s having a hard time keeping his bearings, and he knows this has got to be more than a little disorienting than the rest of the hunters.

Pete’s not particularly worried, though. They’ve got contingency plans for things like this. He sets about taking down what vampires he can and methodically working his way through them and out of the fight. It’s slow goings and pretty fucking annoying, especially since they’re just downtown and the Dandies don’t have any sort of authority here, no matter how precarious or self-imposed.

He doesn’t take out his gun until he hears Joe scream. He’s on the ground, one leg bent under him at a strange angle and a hand trying to stop blood flowing from his hip. Pete takes down a couple of vampires that turn on him before crouching next to his friend.

“You okay?” he asks quickly. Joe looks up at him with wide eyes.

“I think I got shot,” he says in a wondering tone.

Pete’s eyebrows raise incredulously. Dandies—or, vampires in general, really—don’t fight with guns all too often. It’s really out of the ordinary that they would even bring guns along to a fight. Then again, they’re not exactly going by the norm tonight, so Pete doesn’t mention it.

“Nearest rendezvous is a couple blocks away. Do you think you can make it?” he asks instead. Joe’s brow furrows in concentration and he shakes his head.

“Not on my own.”

“Just…aim and shoot a path for us, I’ll take your weight.”

Joe nods and Pete hauls him up. As they hobble their way out of the fight, some of the vampires seem to be dropping out too, which. What? But Pete can’t see Andy or Patrick, so he assumes they were just trying to ward them off. Maybe the Dandies are expanding territory, but the whys and hows are conversations to have with everyone, after the bleeding has stopped and the doors are locked.

It takes them a long time to get to the rendezvous point, and the farther they go, the more moving hurts Joe. Luckily, he’s human, so the bullet isn’t going to poison him, but it’ll still be a bitch to extract if it comes to that.

After they finally make it to the worn-out building, they have to maneuver through a window to get through the basement. Pete crouches down and calls through, says, “Hey, anybody home? Someone’s gotta come help Joe through. He got shot,” and Andy appears. It takes them too many minutes and a hell of a lot of swearing on everyone’s part to get inside. There isn’t really anywhere to put him, so they prop Joe against a wall and seat him on the damp concrete floor. Pete finally straightens up as Andy says something in a low voice to Joe. It’s a lot darker down here than it was on the street, but Pete’s eyes adjust automatically to the shadows. But still….

“Where’s Patrick?” he asks the air. “He should probably take a look at Joe before we move him around much more.”

Andy stills with his back to Pete, just for a second and then he’s straightening up and turning around, casting an eye toward the window they’ve designated the entrance. 

“He’s not…?” Andy turns back to Pete. “I thought he was with you.”

Panic sparks though Pete’s gut and he desperately squashes it down. Patrick always tells him that he’s too fast to freak out (but, hey, lookie there, Patrick’s not here to say it).

“He wasn’t,” Pete says unnecessarily, breathing evenly. His gaze flickers to Joe, blood oozing lazily from the hole in his jeans. “It took us forever to get here. He should be here by now. That fight was over by the time we got out—they were already leaving.” Andy blinks and Pete refrains from punching the wall, but it’s a near thing. “He should _be_ here by now.”

“Maybe he got lost,” Andy says carefully.

“Right,” Pete bites out. Patrick just got fucking lost in Chicago, in his home city. The place they patrol every night. “I’m going to go look for him.”

They both look at Joe at the same time.

“I won’t be able to carry him myself,” Andy says.

“You won’t have to,” Pete answers. “I’ll find Patrick and then he can take a look at his leg.”

“I can walk,” Joe huffs.

“No, you can’t,” Pete says. He sniffs. There’s a sizable amount of blood pooling under Joe’s thigh. “Shit…you’ve lost a lot of blood, and you could barely get down here. Shit.” He looks back to Andy, whose eyes are already on him.

“We’re good, Pete. Go do a sweep for Patrick.”   
“But Joe—”

“Is fine,” Joe interrupts from the floor, though he’s gritting his teeth now, and Pete thinks his hold on his leg is letting up. More blood seeping through the cracks in his fingers.

“No,” Andy says, “he’s not. But here’s what we’re gonna do. Joe and I are gonna call for a ride to the hospital, and you’re going to find your happy place and go do a sweep for Patrick, and meet us at the hospital when you find him.”

Pete nods once, a quick jerk of his head. He ruffles Joe’s hair on his way to the window, but Joe doesn’t seem to notice. Fuck.

***

Pete spends two hours looking for Patrick, searching the two and a half blocks between the club and the rendezvous point, and then beyond in increasingly-large perimeters.

And he doesn’t find him.

It’ll be sunrise in a couple of hours though, and he still has to go to the hospital before he can get home. So, blankly, numbly, methodically, he gets into their van—which is now missing the driver’s side door—and drives fifteen minutes through a traffic-less city. Fifteen minutes away from his search, fifteen minutes away from _I’ll find him_ , fifteen minutes—and something more—away from Patrick.

Pete’s heart seizes when he parks and he closes his eyes. _You’re just freaking out,_ he tells himself. _You can’t have a heart attack if you’re already dead._

He calls Andy from just outside the lobby and by the time he gets to the elevator he knows what room they’re in. Joe looks mostly asleep, but he keeps shifting around minutely under the sheets.

“They gave him some pretty strong stuff for the pain,” Andy explains, “but he was trying to stay awake.” He shoots Pete a meaningful look. Pete swallows thickly.

“I couldn’t find him,” he whispers to Joe from across the room. He can’t look Andy in the eyes. He can’t blink. He doesn’t need to. He’s not live so he doesn’t need to wet his eyeballs. Or breathe. Or fucking _notice when his friends go missing._

“Pete, man, breathe, okay?”

“I don’t need to,” he mumbles.

Andy raises an eyebrow. _That doesn’t mean it’s not a form of punishment._

Pete inhales. When he exhales, it’s, “Patrick’s gone,” and his voice doesn’t break but it should. Patrick’s gone. Patrick’s _gone._

“So was his body though, right?”

And now Pete does blink. Blinks and breathes because _Patrick’s body_ , what?

“If they’d killed him, his body would’ve been there,” Andy explains.

Pete blinks again. “So…what. Either Beckett just wants to kill him personally or they’re holding him hostage?”

“Either or. Point being, I think he’s not dead yet.”

“Yet.”

“Fuck off, Wentz.”

Pete leans against the wall and continues to breathe, to blink. It feels good, and he focuses on the rhythm. After a while he looks over to find Joe’s drug-hazy eyes more-or-less focused on him. Pete crosses the short room, buries one hand in Joe’s hair as he crouches down beside him.

“Hey, Joey,” he hums. Joe takes a couple of deep breaths and his eyelids flutter once.

“Beckett’s not gonna kill ‘im.”

“I know.”

Pete will have to leave in a couple of minutes or risk being stuck in the hospital all day, but for a minute he just has to sit and believe Joe, run his fingers through his friend’s hair as his breathing finally evens out all the way and he stops fighting sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been brought to my attention before that I’m not the best at portraying action scenes in my writing. Please tell me if anything needs clarification or sounds too awkward? I would appreciate the feedback! Thank you.


End file.
